I listened to your podcast that you posted recently about Jesus + racism. From what you said, it sounds like Jesus was in the wrong in that circumstance. But how could that be? Wasn't Jesus perfect? If he was, how do you explain the inconsistency? If he wasn't, then how can he be Savior? -Sarah
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GREAT question, Sarah, and thanks!
I'm gonna open this one by announcing pretty much straight up that there are going to be some confusing lines of thought in this one, because this question gets both into the concept of perfection and incarnation, or the idea that Jesus Christ was both fully human and fully divine.
Put bluntly, it means that some of this won't make immediate sense.
That's because I am going to be talking mysteries, here. If this were a Da Vinci code story, that would mean I would be about to have some Vatican agents attack me to keep the secret, but mysteries in the Christian faith are not secrets, just concepts where the metaphysical gears aren't fully understood. Some of my Atheists will read them and say, "Well, yeah, this is part of why I don't believe," and that's fine. This is a leap of faith type situation.
So, Jesus Christ. Between four gospels and numerous letters describing him, we know two things about his Biblical Identity for certain. First, that he is human, and second, that he is God.
The first few centuries of Christian theology swirled around this idea, and many people had different ways of sorting it out. Some groups insisted that Christ was God masquerading as a human in a cunning disguise. Others placed Jesus in the "Really Great Guy" category. Sent by God, sure. Empowered by God, certainly. Maybe even conceived by God. But not actually GOD.
Both of these created significant theological problems. If Christ was GOD, but not actually human, then how could he die? If the embodied Jesus of Nazareth was just a cunning disguise then what actually happened during the crucifixion event? Was it a big gag played on those who tried to kill him? Did the suffering really mean anything?
If Christ was not God, then who cared if he died? People are killed by other people brutally, even unjustly, all the time. How would this death be any more significant, any more meaningful? And what about all those God statements Christ made? Was he just crazy?
The answer found was that Christ was both human and divine. The cross event was not divine sleight of hand, but an actual physical living being suffering from beatings and torture and finally death by crucifixion. Likewise, Christ was God, and therefore capable of an act that would serve a purpose beyond a sad metaphor.
Which is all well and good for the cross event... but what about the life of that human body? To hear some Christians tell the story, the important parts of the Incarnation could have been duplicated by taking the baby Jesus out of the manger and nailing him to the cross, but the life actually was important.
Because God, timeless and perfect, became one with a human body, which is temporal and, initially, incomplete.
In the podcast you are referencing, Jesus makes a comment that is undeniably racist, but true based on his current worldview that divided the world into Jews and Gentiles.
Have you ever heard someone you thought of as a Good Person make a racist comment? The kind where there is no hate, or venom, but simply an assumption of superiority of one facet of humanity over another based on race? I feel that is what is going on here. It's racism based on ignorance, not hatred.
So what happens? The woman responds in a way that amazes Jesus, and he changes his mind. He heals her daughter, as she has been asking him to, and from that point on Jesus no longer makes the distinction between Jew and Gentile. She cured him of his ignorance.
A lot of people like to talk about Jesus as perfect but I feel that is misleading, because while it remembers the God part of the Jesus equation, it forgets the human side. Human beings grow, and have to learn. We see the GOD here somewhat in how quickly Jesus learns and extrapolates the lesson.
So no, Jesus was not perfect, at least not in the concept of having reached any sort of Platonic ideal. Jesus Christ was a human being, so fully and completely that there was a point in his life when Mary and Joseph had to clean his bottom because babies aren't born potty trained. But he learned, and he learned fast.
So yes, there was a time when Jesus had to learn that, despite all the religious people around him saying otherwise, that his role as God was bigger than the nation of Judah, even bigger than the tribes of Israel. It's fair to say that made him "not perfect."
Then again, maybe that was the point. Teaching us that we are ALL works in progress.
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